Naked as We Come
by droidgirl
Summary: She is the one who will remain, when all else has failed. 10 and Rose's love story. Doomsday spoilers. Angsty as hell.


**Naked As We Came**

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, nor am I getting paid for anything.

Lyrics by Iron and Wine. Not me.

* * *

_She says "wake up, it's no use pretending"  
I'll keep stealing, breathing her.  
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending  
__One of us will die inside these arms  
Eyes wide open, naked as we came  
One will spread our ashes 'round the yard_

_She says "If I leave before you, darling  
Don't you waste me in the ground"  
I lay smiling like our sleeping children  
One of us will die inside th__ese arms  
Eyes wide open, naked as we came  
One will spread our ashes round the yard_

* * *

She remembers Simon Johnson, how he had asked if she wanted to watch a tape with him that weekend at his house, since his parents were off in Cardiff for the weekend for someone's wedding.

Unfortunately, she can't remember what film it was. She was too distracted. No, not because of _that_. She thinks, as she strains against her memories, it had something to do with drugs and car chases and Vegas. What she does remember clearly, is the effort it took to make her breathing even. She remembers being scared that he would hear how fast and loud her heart was beating as she sat next to him, always constantly aware that he was less than two inches away. She remembers how her pinky finally made contact with the back of his hand, and how both their breaths had hitched, but they refused to look at each other, faces red with the effort of not looking.

No, Rose Tyler could not remember what the movie was about. There were more important things.

* * *

"How long are you going to stay with me?" he had asked her, making it sound like a jest.

She could hear the tension under his words; she could hear his unspoken plea, and it made her heart burst, knowing that he yearned as much as she did.

"Forever." she said, pretending to have to consider it, tearing her eyes from the sight she was pretending to watch.

Flying stingrays, alien sunsets - great. There were more important things; this was her life happening.

He looked at her and smiled, and she knew he didn't even notice where they had landed.

She started towards the TARDIS, unsure of what to say or do in the awkward silence that ensued. As the doors closed behind him softly, she turned abruptly to him and looked up into his questioning gaze.

Slowly, she stepped forward, drawn in by an invisible force. He didn't step back. She took another step, and now she was right under his nose, literally, and still his eyes were trained on her. She tilted her head up. Her eyes began to slide close in the thrall she was rapidly weaving, something older and more ancient than even he could tell.

She half expected to be left standing at the doorway of the spaceship, in the breeze left by his flapping coat as he fled; instead, what she got was his warm lips gently descending on her's. They pressed together, her arms creeping up and around his neck of their own violation; his hands clung firmly to her sides, and she could feel his fingers through her layers.

Always his strong hands and fingers to catch her when she fell.

After what seemed like long minutes, they pulled their faces softly away from each other, though the rest of their bodies grew closer, straining towards each other, bound by unseen ropes. Their breaths grew shallower.

"Hello." she whispered, a small smile playing around her lips. She might have been young a minute ago, but in that minute, something had changed within irrevocably.

"Hello." He responded in kind, eyes alight with a strange glow.

He dipped his head low again and captured her mouth. It started out as gently as it did before, but as the seconds wore on, the kiss grew more insistent. He circled her lips with his own, his hot breath stinging her cheeks, and her lips parted.

He needed no further invitation, his tongue dipping in, deepening their kiss.

They became lovers that night in her bed. His hands explored her carefully, as if she were a brand new paradise in a universe that was tarnished to his heart. His eyes said _she is it. She is the one who will remain when everything else fails. _

She learnt how to make him gasp; how to turn this awesome, ancient, god-like being into a man, teaching him to moan and buck under her body. She echoed her promise of _forever_ in every brush of her fingertips.

Afterwards, he held her as she slumbered, aware that he was a selfish old man, too too old in every way that counted, but knowing he could not let her go.

He didn't sleep in his own bed again; not until all promises were shattered as they were wont to do.

* * *

He once thought home would always be there if he ever chose to visit again. He didn't visit often; there were good reasons he left, and he still stands by them. That fact didn't make it hurt any less, that there was no home for him to return to, only an old spaceship that broke down more often that he'd like. As much as he adored his old girl.

As it turned out, he hadn't been as ready to let go of Gallifrey as he thought he had been. And he still wasn't ready to let go of Rose long after she had been taken from him, screaming.

* * *

She did not know how long it took him to find that crack in the universe. How could she? She conveniently forgets, he knows, that time stands still for him, and that centuries of searching later, he'd still look exactly the same. For her, it was weeks. For him, empires had risen and fallen as he searched desperately for any way to see her again.

All for a few minutes to say good bye, to say the words he never told her.

Most of that time was wasted on silly pleasantries, and wasted on his fumbling when she says,

"There's five of us now. Mum, dad, Mickey…and the baby."

For a moment, he's stunned and strangely elated. Perhaps their's was not a fruitless love story. Perhaps he had not doomed her to complete and utter heartbreak. Perhaps he had given her something more lasting than mere memories, and he, of all beings, knew how useless and painful those could be.

On the other hand, realistically speaking, he might have screwed her life over, leaving her a single mother in a strange world where she didn't even have an official birth certificate.

Or she might even mean Mickey. Christ he wished he were corporeal. He'd tear the boy a new one.

"You're not…" he stuttered.

"No," and here, Rose burst out laughing and his heart broke again, knowing that's the last he'd hear of that sound. There was a flash of disappointment, but a small sense of relief that he after all, had not saddled her with yet another thing he could not be a part of.

A little later, when he's successfully driven her to tears, she told him brokenly, honestly,

"I love you."

And he hated himself for ever considering that she might have been untrue. But those words went a long way towards recovery. Which must happen, he knew, if he is to go on. Whether he likes it or not.

"Quite right, too." He told her.

He wanted to tell her the words he should have uttered to her every day.

He wanted to tell her that he was not ready to let her go. That there was never going to be a  
time when it was going to be OK to let her go.

He wanted to be on that beach forever with her, even if he couldn't touch her.

But he didn't get any of that. Instead, he's back on his ship again, his larger, emptier on the inside ship. There's nothing he's allowed to do, taking comfort only in the fact, which he pointed out before on his way to hell, that she _knows_.

So he put one foot in front of another, and started a new course.

Because there was just no other way.

* * *

On that beach, Rose's will steeled itself.

And begun the journey back to her Doctor.


End file.
